women exploring race relations, systemic racism, and prejudice

What’s cookin’

Last week, NBC got its share of heat for a fight, that like many before it, started in the cafeteria. For years, cafeteria chef Leslie Calhoun had advocated for a special menu to highlight Black History month. When NBC finally granted her request, the result was this menu:

...and I totally get black love for Aquafina (beats Dasani, any day).

The photographer? Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, the drummer for Jimmy Fallon’s “Late Night” show band, The Roots (arguably one of the best parts about Fallon’s show, but I digress). Questlove took the photo with his phone and posted it on Twitter with the caption: “Hmm…HR?”

It’s pretty thoughtless. It’s like saying, “See, here’s something good that came out of slavery! We’re all good now, right?” -utterlycharming

New York Magazine called the situation “a Saturday Night Live–worthy farce about liberal racial oversensitivity.” The commentary at NY Magazine’s Daily Intel reported that, according to Calhoun, after the first shot was taken of the menu:

“The next thing you know, people were taking pictures of the sign and asking all the other black people in the cafeteria if this was racist. They said that it wasn’t.”

That’s awesome. Especially since the black population at NBC is only around 11 percent countrywide, and so we imagine everyone bombarding like the one guy who happened to be in the cafeteria with questions, like, “Hey, black person. Don’t you think that’s racist? Aren’t you upset? Don’t you think you should be? I mean, you understand why this is offensive, right?”

Comedian Wanda Sykes took NBC to task in her appearance on The Jay Leno Show (it’s still called that, right?):
Vodpod videos no longer available.

Questlove has since posted this statement about the controversy (emphasis mine):

when i saw the sign i have to admit….i was DYING. like literally LMAO!!! maybe it was juxtaposition of the words: collard & history, jalapeno & honor, fried, black and nbc?? maybe it was the acculturative stress of having 28 days for this food that represents you but come march…pot roast for life kid!

whatever the case, I found this funny and when I find something funny I like to let the world in on the joke (twitpic anyone??). in NO way did i ever think that this was some cruel insensitive joke on behalf of jeff zucker and his comrades at nbc (the cafeteria isn’t even owned or operated by nbc).

I kinda get where leslie calhoun (our culinary rosa parks) was coming from; fried chicken as a fragrant, tasty, honorable metaphor for the struggles and accomplishments of america’s black masses.

The problem is..in the blogosphere, things can take on a life of their own. “online journalists”, site commenters, even comedians (see wanda sykes on leno) have now taken my snapshot of leslie’s missionary zeal and retooled it for their own racialized – “let’s bash nbc for their conan sins” – flogging mission. my twitpic was just me poking fun, a Questlove still life that was clearly intended as a joke. what’s even funnier: race issues in post racial america. potluck anyone?????

I, of course, have my own take on these events and have exhaustively argued with my husband and myself about the implications of such a “celebration” of black history. I think there are many layers to this and to ignore any one of them is an injustice and a reduction of the complexity that is our nation’s history with race.

So lay your own layer on me: what do our readers and my fellow bloggers think about all this? “Liberal oversensitivity”? “Another example of institutional racism”? “Black on black crime?” Let’s dish.

4 Responses

When I heard about this NBC menu, I was in a conversation with some other white folks. When the subject of “food stereotypes” came up, one of the other people protested, “But they do eat that!” My immediate response was: “They? WE eat that! Where we’re from, all of us eat that.”

I’d never even heard of these “black food” stereotypes– honestly– until I was in high school and listening to the musical “Hair.” One of the black characters sings a song about racial slurs, and this is one of the verses: “and for dinner at the White House you’re going to feed him: watermelon, hominy grits, an’ shortnin’ bread, alligator ribs, some pig tails, some black-eyed peas, some chitterlings, some collard greens…” My first confused thoughts were something like: “Who doesn’t like grits, black-eyed peas, and collards? Eating chitterlings has nothing to do with color. These are just normal foods.”

The thing is, they’re not “normal” foods …elsewhere. In places like Chicago or Boston, where I’ve since learned that some people have never even seen okra, much less prepared and eaten it, the mention of foods like these could be used to make people who do eat them seem “alien” or “other.” The foods become stereotypes pointing to that otherness, dividing people: “They are not us.” Where I’m from, eating these foods wouldn’t distinguish one person from another, so their mention couldn’t effectively be used to “other-ize” people. As I said to my friend, “They are us!” And I guess that’s why I’d never heard the food stereotypes before high school. I mean, who doesn’t eat grits for breakfast or fried chicken for Sunday dinner at grandmother’s house? What half-decent cafeteria doesn’t regularly serve collards (or turnip or mustard greens), black-eyed peas, and cornbread– at least weekly, if not daily?

In a place like New York, where these foods are sometimes used to other-ize and stereotype, a cafeteria menu like this can appear offensive. In my hometown, people would probably say “Awesome, collards and cornbread again today! Anyone know what this has to do with black history month?” Different places, different meanings.

This reminds me of a classic problem with lame attempts at multiculturalism: Reducing it to sharing food. The “multiculturalism” of food focuses on something easy to swallow (sorry, couldn’t resist the pun) rather than something that’s actually challenging, like addressing the persistence of racism.

I’m remembering now that Frank Wu’s book Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black & White has a chapter on food stereotypes and diversity called “The Best ‘Chink’ Food: Dog-eating and the Dilemma of Diversity.” I should find that and reread it.

This reminds me of a classic problem with lame attempts at multiculturalism: Reducing it to sharing food. The “multiculturalism” of food focuses on something easy to swallow (sorry, couldn’t resist the pun) rather than something that’s actually challenging, like the persistence of racism.

This is how “diversity day” at my husband’s corporate job is run. Everyone gets to eat “those other people’s” food and listen to a representative sample of “those other people’s” music and/or poetry. It’s a place to start, but by no means enough.

And that, to me, is the real threat. It makes everyone feel safe, settled and comfortable, ignoring the deeper questions, the bigger problems.

But this, I think is partly complicated by Black History month thing. Many of us think it should be an opportunity to focus entirely on a particular segment of the population’s history and contributions to our greater society. Others think it’s an excuse to relegate our shared history to one month of “otherness.”

In many places, not just NBC, it’s handled poorly. Like how when I was in school, it meant we read worksheets on famous African Americans and put pictures of Oprah and Whitney Houston up in our classroom. So much for believing the children are our future…